Books Poetry

Waft & Weft

Written from the earthed ground-ness of the English countryside with brief sojourns to Martinique, Madrid and Florence. Reading them back they seemed to be intimating that we as humans are static and time happens to us. As such, consciousness can only perceive the present but memory and dream take us on intimate inner journeys to the soul of our pasts

. –The ghosts of our lovers and losses of loved ones who are always with us.–

Introduction by Rehan Qayoom.

Rehan Qayoom is a poet of English and Urdu, editor, translator scholar and archivist, educated at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has featured in numerous literary publications and performed his work internationally. He is the author of About Time. .www.rehanqayoom.weebly.com

On Waft & Weft: Poems through the fabric of time

Victoria Mosley

‘’An astonishing and beautiful collection ‘’

‘’You send me songs

too late, too far

from who I have

become.

My lips burn:

those lips that only

say goodbye

& you wonder why

you wonder why. ‘’

(‘Cold’).

We are offered striking visions from a world where not only the fire ‘burnt a huge hole’ but the rose did too (‘Remember’). Poems of waft and weft, of short, sharp and precise imagery technically reminiscent of classical Chinese poetry, which isn’t surprising as the poet spent much of her life in the Far East. They remind one of creamy smooth skin. These are very pristine and feminine poems:

‘’touch me &

I’ll disappear

like love did. ‘’

(‘White Moon’).

They could only be written by a female poet.

Lines like:

‘’it’s hard to place a stamp on this:

the love you wouldn’t try

for you knew that I

was always sure to run,

and you were bound to fly. ‘’

(‘Paul’s Song’)

Imprint upon the imaginal like yesterdays and yesteryears –

Foreboding and forbidding as in:

‘’Beauty carries its

own curse, it blinds us

to this shadow world ‘’

(‘Keeper of dreams’).

There is an interesting word-play here on ‘blinds’/binds.

Yet, though these poems flit effortlessly across the page, reel off the tongue and are not challenging to engage with, the reader should be under no illusion of cushiness: note the heavy allusions in ‘Miracle’ and how the splendid Coleridgean reference of its final line works in conjunction with the poem as a whole. Other points to note are the honing of form to minimal to match the sparsity of language. The many and various allusions throughout to literary giants from all traditions especially from the Persian poets Rumi and Hafiz The effortless way that the poems inhabit the present ”Buddhist ” moment .and the singularity of the internal music of the poems which means that they have to be spoken out loud and not just read.